THE FUTURE OF ECOMMERCE
Three different scenarios on the near future of eCommerce
By Jessica Clarén, Fabio Resende, Henrik Rosander and Mikaela Saletti
The Future Is Priceless (a fictional communication device with no hard disc
space), plug in your headphones and start scrolling
Preface an online music download community. When you
In a society where BitTorrent downloading, You- have put your playlist together you click download.
Tube TV broadcasting and Skype telecommuni- A one minute promotion film about a new Volvo
cation are changing the way we consume cul- model starts. eScreen’s built in eye scanning device
ture and communicate we are getting more and sends a confirmation message to the music commu-
more used to have things for free. The future will nity saying that you have been watching the com-
be priceless because nothing will be paid… well, mercial and the playlist starts downloading. The rest
almost nothing. of the trip feels much more pleasant with music in
your ears and no money spent.
Ongoing trends show that we are more willing to
accept products, services etc, if we get them for The next morning you are supposed to do your
free. Well of course, the other way around would laundry. Your Electrolux washing machine will
be quite odd. The whole “buy now, pay later”-con- not start and you don’t know why. You log in to
cept is nowadays worldwide spread. The same goes the company’s service community and explain your
with the mobile phone business - you pick up your problem. You get the answer that there is no use try-
phone at the nearest dealer for one () krona and ing to fix it. You order a new one right there in the
just pay a monthly fee for the subscription. Old community and it arrives to your door the day after.
news to everyone and not exactly a trend, merely The machine does not come with an invoice, the
a fact. But what happens when we don’t want to only thing you have to do is to sign a contract saying
pay for our MacBooks, s (Electrolux dish- that you have to buy all your washing powder from
washer) or Volvos? a certain manufacturer for at least months. Once
again, no money is spent at the scene and you can,
In the “real world” we can go to any food store and
although one day late, do your laundry and finally
collect points when we buy our vegetables and milk.
wear that favorite t-shirt again.
We can use these points to buy even more vegeta-
bles. We can make the tube journey a bit more en- ...................................................................................................
joyable with today’s Metro in our hands. In the in-
ternet world, social networks, such as Facebook and In Years eCommerce Is Just
MySpace, are financed by ads. A Luxembourg based A Ghost
service called Spotify is trying to become an ad-fi-
nanced iTunes. The future will take these “priceless- Preface
concepts” even further but in some way we are still The shortcuts we are trying to create in life are
going to spend our money. now actually making us spend more time and
having more discomfort in things we are not in-
Our Predictions, One Scenario terested in.
It is , picture yourself on the tube on your
way home from a night out. You are bored, the Today there is a growing dissatisfaction when it
tube is moving so slowly. You pick up your eScreen comes to using credit cards over the Internet.
People are feeling uncomfortable sharing their so- considering the fact that there are billion people
cial security and credit card numbers over the web. online, there are a lot of friends to make. It is also
Today there is a big piracy network and millions of a given that you can search for reviews and sugges-
ways to get a hand on an enormous list of usable tions for basically any product online and find a so-
credit cards numbers and shop using someone elses lution for any need you might have on the web.
earned money.
Great minds think alike, and The new thing on
We buy things without having seen them in real life this scenario is what is being called Team-buying, if
and cross our fingers that they really, really respond you buy a large quantity of one product, you have
to our expectations and reach our front door. Some- a greater bargain power, probably a discount and ev-
times they do, sometimes they don’t and sometimes eryone will get the product at a lower cost.
the company we bought stuff from no longer ex- People want to be extraordinary. This need creates a
ists. System crashes down and money disappears out huge trend of uniqueness and customization.
in cyberspace. People today are looking for secure, Users are not only visiting sites and services. They
trustable and timesaving resources to assists their want to be involved. To participate you can create
daily routines. There is no time for mistakes and an artwork for a -shirt, submit it and earn money
double-checking and there is no time for living a for your uniqueness. On the other hand, whoever
life insecure. buys these t-shirts have less chance of running into
someone with the same one.
E-commerce is also reducing the job opportunities
But what happens when you put uniqueness, crowd
drastically. The consumers buying power is getting
power and communities together?
poorer, which kills the small business and increasing
the gap between small companies and big ones… In 2012
In the long run a disaster for the business industry. Imagine one central shopping community with ben-
efits for everyone. For a company there is the large
We are quickly killing one of the century’s big-
amount of input in only one place. The Company
gest predicted trend and in years it will just be a
can get ideas for new products, request for improve-
ghost.
ments in existing products or the need for more spe-
2012 – We Want The REAL Thing cific products. It will be easy to se where the market
Desperately seeking reliable and safe ways to con- is heading and also easy to see, find and follow new
sume things we have created a world without plas- trends. Basically it is field research and creative ideas
tic… when it comes to money at least. almost for free.
We want the real thing. We want to be able to feel
Almost?
and see the products we buy and also see the money
Yes. When you see through the consumer’s eyes,
we spend to be in control over our own economical
they should get revenues proportionally to what
balance. We are spending more time in stores now
they helped on the whole project. Customers would
then before convinced this is the way we save most
be able to submit new ideas, help to develop them
time, interact with people and end up more satis-
and beta-test it. Actually, they will do the beginning
fied. Yesterday has become the future.
of the whole process in developing a new product,
................................................................................................... without any cost for the company.
Crowd Sourcing Why?
This way you as a customer get exactly the product
Preface that you want, and you just might get paid for it and
With the growth of Internet users and online the company might just end up selling more prod-
communities today, relationships between ucts because they actually have created something
“strangers” has become easier to build. there is a need for.
And of course these user recommendations would
You find social networks everywhere today and
be really valuable to other costumers. It’s an expert’s
opinion on something that he really believes in. For
instance, if a group of people want a blue MacBook
,why should apple not do it? A “customized” version
of a product, as a reward for their demand and their
help with all the other products.
And why should not a big group of people, that are
buying a product in bulk, have a discount?